The Deck of Omens (The Devouring Gray #2) - Christine Lynn Herman Page 0,29

it take her over, stood up and stormed out.

But Harper wasn’t Violet. She knew Augusta had wronged her?—and she knew, just as well, that she could not change the Hawthornes’ betrayal. But it didn’t mean there was nothing to learn from the sheriff. So again she stayed silent, and to her surprise, Augusta’s face creased not with derision, but sympathy.

“I had the same problem when I first came into my powers,” she said, almost gently.

“Really?” Harper asked, surprised.

“It is extremely unpleasant,” Augusta continued, rather stiffly, as if the very words made her uncomfortable, “to feel as if you are merely a vessel instead of the one in control.”

Harper’s surprise deepened. She hated being used. She’d hated it when her father had done it, when Augusta and Juniper had tried to do it. But most of all, she hated that the power she had waited her entire life to have felt like it was just using her, too.

“Yes,” she said, trying not to show how much it meant to her that someone else felt that way, too. “It is. So how do I stop it?”

“Well, the difficult thing is that you are a vessel. All of us are. That is what our rituals do?—they make us proper receptacles for power. Which means you must learn how to tame it before it tames you. You’re good with a sword, yes?”

Harper nodded. “Very good, thank you.”

Augusta’s lips twitched. If Harper hadn’t known better, she’d have said the older woman was amused.

“Think of your power as a blade, then. One you must wield internally. Hone it in your mind. Call upon it with clear intention. Set boundaries, and do not allow it to surpass them.”

This all made sense to Harper?—too much sense, almost. It seemed so simple.

“I see,” she said slowly, and then: “I want to try it.”

“I thought you might.” She gestured to the leaves scattered on the ground. “Perhaps you can begin with one of them. Turn something small to stone. See if you can stop.”

Harper’s heart thudded in her chest as she lifted a browning leaf into the air. She twirled it in her fingers, thinking of Augusta’s words?—Call upon it with clear intention?—and pictured the leaf transforming to stone, just that leaf, nothing else. Then she pushed her power into it, exhaling. Immediately, stone spread from the tips of her fingers, rushing up the leaf’s stem and engulfing it in reddish-brown.

“There,” she said, setting the thin piece of stone down gently on the grass.

Augusta gave her a sharp, approving nod.

Harper was about to smile when she felt something course through her again, another wave of power. She slammed her palm against the ground and shuddered as a wave of stone rippled out from between her fingers, this one spreading across the ground. Augusta scrambled hastily out of the way as it rushed toward her.

When the surge of power faded, Harper was left staring at a swathe of stone leaves and grass before her, extending perhaps five feet outward from where her hand had struck the ground. She felt dizzy and disoriented again. Her residual limb ached as her frustration deepened, phantom pain twinging through a left hand that no longer existed.

It hadn’t worked. Of course it hadn’t worked. Harper hated that she was disappointed. She rose cautiously to her feet, the world still spinning, and braced herself for whatever insult Augusta Hawthorne was about to hurl her way.

But instead, Augusta was staring at the damage Harper had done, an unreadable expression on her face.

“Hmm,” she said. “Perhaps asking you to work on this here was unwise. We’ll try your lake next time.”

“My lake?” Harper asked, trying not to sound dubious. “It doesn’t belong to me.”

“Yes, it does.” Augusta gestured to the tree behind her. “The founders’ rituals might be different, but they are all based around specific places. The Saunderses’ attic. Your lake. Our tree. The Sullivans’…” She trailed off, shook her head. “The point is, place matters in Four Paths. It puts you in tune with the bargain you made and enables you to focus. Why do you think we hold the Founders’ Day ceremony on the seal?”

“I’ve never really thought about it,” Harper said honestly.

“Because that’s where the founders sacrificed themselves for the Beast,” Augusta said. “It is an important place for us all.”

Harper had never known that. There was a lot she didn’t know, she realized, guilt rising in her. Maybe the Hawthornes had deserved to have their focal point taken away, but she wasn’t sure the